Transcription
Week 18: FEAST
(Silence until 0:17:44.6)
[Scott]: Hello? Can you hear me (laughing)? Yeah, that's the internet speaking. Hey Steven? Hello? Can you hear us?
[Steven]: Hey Scott. How are you doing?
[Scott]: Hey good. Can you hear us? Can you hear me?
[Steven]: Yep.
[Scott]: Awesome. Okay. So...
(Background chatter)
Is that better? Okay, cool. Yeah. Welcome everybody who is here online and everybody in the space to another week of, I feel like a talk show host here. But, to another week of this year of weekly events called Plausible Artworlds where we're looking at a different kind of fledgling or micro artworld. Some of them not so micro even, each week for the year. This week, we'll be talking with Jeff from FEAST, and Kate as well, from FEAST, who have been doing this thing in Brooklyn for a little while now. Rather than explain it myself, I wanted to kind of turn it over to Jeff. We're just going to try to have an informal conversation with a microphone. Is everybody still there?
Can you hear us? I assume. Well, just type in if it's crazy and you can't hear us. Oh, okay. Yes, thanks Alyssa. Okay, cool. Hi Jeff.
[Jeff]: H! Can you guys hear ok? Apparently there's a, what's going on upstairs? Oh, a Kung Fu class going on upstairs. Um, so, if you can't hear or if I get quite start waving wildly. So, who has been to one of these before? Anyone here at BaseKamp? The potluck before. Who's been to the potluck before? Cool. Who was at any of the talks a couple weeks ago, we did three talks here in Philly. A few people? Okay. Has anyone been to a feast in Brooklyn? Okay, cool. So, no one knows everything, which is a big part of my investigation and whenever I go talk to groups of people I like to reiterate that I have expertise and I have lots of non expertise. So, just because I happen to have a microphone in my hand does not mean that I am the one that should be talking. So, just to reiterate what Scott says, please rip this thing out of my hand. Specifically, especially tonight I think it's really important to have the people here in the room talking. We really wanted the sort of basic strategy to help get a feast or something like it going in Philly was for me to come to a few conversations and then to come back and see who shows up and who actually wants to organize and make it happen here. We do have some support but, at the same time what's long lasting and what's sustainable is that there are people here in the community who are saying "this is what we need. This is what we're interested in. These are the communities we want to serve. This is the style of support we want to create" so you're much better at answering those questions than I am.
The five cent tour of FEAST, for anyone who wasn't here a couple weeks ago and for those online. Are you guys online? Type something. We can see you. Maybe. Um, great. Awesome. So, basically we've been going on for about a year and a half in Brooklyn, NY. There is about eight core members that really sort of facilitate our project happening and I think that a nice size. And then about twenty members, volunteers that really make it happen. From the turnout from a couple weeks ago, it seems like it could be a similar size in terms of scope, here in Philadelphia. So, I would think about that in terms of if it's being organized here. You know there's probably going to be a couple hundred people that show up that you'll probably have about ten projects each time. That's sort of what we run on. And then it does take a good crew of people to make it happen. We host a dinner about every three months in a church basement. People come in and pay $20 and they get supper and (inaudible 0:23:03.2) that we work with a local farm and do an organic, locally sourced meal. A seasonal meal. And whoever gets the most votes of the projects that are around the room, there are about ten artist projects around the room. Whoever gets the most votes gets the money that we collect at the door. Then they come back the next time and show what they worked on. The whole sort of importance behind it... I can stand too, do we have enough chairs? The whole importance behind it was that the people that organize it all work in art production for the most part. Artist designers, museum folks, gallery folks, writers. And we felt and still feel that our jobs and the way that we were producing culture was really at risk in the economic downturn. And at the same time we were participating in sustainable food projects like CSA's Farmshare, grocery co-ops, composting, eating locally and that all of those systems, even though they allegedly were more expensive to buy into, were really thriving in an allegedly terrible economy. And so, we wanted to look at those sustainable food systems and try to apply them to create sustainable models of cultural production and consumption.
And I brought... I won't get into that (expletive 0:24:33.2). Maybe we'll do our throws right now.
So, Halloween last year, I got to the point where I really sick of producing in New York the way that you need to produce in order to pay your rent and to consume the way you need to consume in New York. And so I put my stuff in storage and started to different cities. As soon as we started FEAST a year and a half ago, people started emailing us from around the county saying "Oh that's so cool. Can we do that where we're from?" And my answer has always been "yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes!!" I mean, we ripped our idea off of kids in Chicago at Incubate who had been doing Sunday Soup for years and years who borrowed it from the great guy named Ben. He had started in Grand Rapids, Mi. It's really been something that has traveled across the county and to be honest, every nonprofit every year has a big dinner called a gala, where they invite all the people that give them money that actually make the decisions for the nonprofit and they do this exact system except it's a lot more coded and a lot less transparent.
Yes. Was that a yes? Can I get an "Amen" from the internet?
(Laughter)
So, we were really interested in this and also looking at emerging systems of technology as an inspiration for sort of the architecture of an organization and I was talking with Scott a little bit today about the idea of open source as being a way to fund raise. This is really open source fund raising for us. And to that end, you didn't need to get a masters degree in arts administration, you didn't need to go work at the institution for 10 years to know the funders, he didn't need to… Anyone could do what we were doing. Anyone could have 10 people over for dinner and ask everyone to kick in 20 bucks into a project that you're excited about $200. And so I think we were really excited about the simplicity of it as well.
So I've been going around. I went to Minneapolis and help started a feast there. Of help sort of remotely facilitate other projects and other projects have sort of emerged on their own. And I think FEAST, partly because it's about big ugly city which is often as people think of as a connecting point. We are a connector for Stu in Baltimore, stock in Portland, OR, there is a feast in Cleveland, there's a feast that's in the Berkshires in MA, there's another feast outside Boston and you know every time we get a little bit of press I get another round of emails from Jacksonville Florida or Orlando we just heard from as well. But this is a much more concerted effort. So I think we wanted this to be a place where it feels a little directed and a little more assisted. It's such a large city and has so many artists and so many resources and I think it could be a really... What, in three days we had 70 people show up or something? So there's, you know, obviously not everyone came back but there's a lot of energy behind something like this.
One of the conversations that came up. You know, before I even start getting into more specific stuff, does anyone want to say anything? I hate that I'm geographically dominating and physically dominating this conversation. Does anyone have responses that they've been stewing on since we had our meetings the last time? Kate or Theresa do you have anything to say? Scott? Oh! There's a hand! There's a hand!
[Male Group Member] Q: Can you talk a little bit about how the actual non-profit part works or how, I know that you guys have some kind of non-profit status that you operate under or a fiscal sponsor. How do like other cities tackle that for long term sustainability? And where does the money come from and go and all those things?
[Jeff] A: Um, does this get documented forever and ever? Probably. Um, so (laughing). No. So, we are fiscally sponsored under Fractured Atlas so if anyone makes a donation to our organization, it goes through Fractured Atlas. It's a non-profit that we fall under. And so that's how any sort of big donations happen. FEAST in Brooklyn has not received any sort of major donations. We did a big kick starter but those are all small, mostly $25 - $100. We did a few $200-$250 donations. But for the most part we're a $10 and $20 operation. The actual grants, it is a CASH CASH CASH situation! And the way that we think about it and now that we are continuing and growing and sort of production more money, we're seeking more specific financial advice. Which we're in the process of doing right now. But the way that we've always considered it is like it's a private event, its private party, and that really it's not we are an organization we don't have an LLC. You know, we're not like an individual propriety that it's many, many people making small donations to an individual and that's how we would define it tax wise. That no one is getting $1,000 from me, Jeff Hnilicka but that 200 people are in a room all giving someone $20 in cash. But, we also don't claim it. It's not really going through us either. We put it in a bag with a dollar sign on it and then we hand the bag with the dollar sign over to someone and then they walk away with it. If someone wanted to claim it as income, that would be where it would get tricky. But we have enough expenses where we are able to show... Like we have plenty of receipts. Our expenses far exceed our individual donations. So, that's sort of the logistics of it.
(Inaudible comment question from background)
We do. We max out at $1,000. We don't fund anyone more than $1,000. Last time we funded four projects. We did one $1,000 grant, one $600 grants and two $400 grants. That's what we did last time. One $600. One $1, 000, one $600 and two $400 grants.
So in terms, if you're asking like a tax question, we're looking into that ourselves and I don't really have a great answer for you. But, I feel like it's scrappy enough and fluid enough that anything that feels concrete is definitely taken care of. But we are like not interested in becoming a non-profit. I think, for us, it's an artistic practice. An artistic program and the formality of becoming an institution and having a board to answer to and...
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Huh. NATO's getting loud. That's not really anything we're interested in. I think another big piece of for us in Brooklyn is thinking about responsible growth and sustainable growth. And we don't want to do anything else besides four events a year. We all like having our own things that we do. We started out doing once a month and it was insane. It's not fun. You finish one and you're getting ready for the next one. It feels a lot better to space it out. So, does that answer the question you were asking? I don't know if I answered that. Okay.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Yeah, I mean it's not that we don't... The like going out and sharing the idea with other people, for me is a lot less about it. I've always described it as "I'm not trying to start whole foods". I want to help people start lots of CSA's around the country that are individual, doing their own thing. If they want to be called FEAST that's great. If they want to come up with their own name that's fantastic. All the different cities around the county sort of have their own iterations so, you know. In Baltimore they pick a couple of different organizations that they fund. In Portland they let the first ten people that propose go. Incubate has tried a bunch of different ways to do what they do and it's still an evolving process and for us it's an evolving process too. This last time we had 27 proposals come in and we did an internal prescreening where we only selected eight projects to be proposed, which was actually really successful and we were really happy with that. So, I think that actually something that I would love to do. Because I think most people know most of the things that I've just said.
So, I really want to hear from everyone that is here is what is it that Philadelphia would want and need? And what populations are you guys wanting to serve here? I think to reach out to people, we did three different geographic areas, but it seems more and more interesting for me as an outsider and from a lot of people that are organizing to do something more centrally located that would serve the entire city and to bring the city together in a different way. But, you know, you are the ones that are here at the table now and that are wanting to organize. So that's something I would love to hear peoples' responses on. Does anyone want to talk? I can keep talking so... Don't stop me.
[Scott]: One question that I have is I wonder if the prescreening... This was a similar question that came up during one of the other recent weeks where we focused on The Collective Foundation and some of their micro funding strategies or projects even. Just examples of things they've done. And one was something very similar where everybody that kind of bought into it, with almost no money, could then vote on the the pool of money, the surplus went to. To fund some project by that person (coughing). Excuse me. Anyway, one of the things that they were doing in one of these projects was prescreening them so like, I don t know. 30 or 40 or 50 applicants and then they sort of whittle it down to five and then everybody gets to vote on those five. And my question was like why not just go ahead and choose the winner? If you're going to go ahead and narrow it down already. I mean, obviously it's to give people a sense of voting but I guess I was just kind of curious about that process and why have a sort of first pass.
[Jeff]: No totally. And it's something that we really struggled with and I'm sure will re-invision the next time we do it. We've always let every proposal come in and they're always a lot of stinker. That's great and we love that because there are people that have never applied for a grant before that see what a difference that level of professionalism or that specificity gives to a granting pool. And so, it was sort of a heartbreaker for me to like get rid of the projects that were like not super great or really poorly explained or poorly executed. But, at the same time there's a logistics issue for us. We had 20 proposals the time before and you can't dig through that sort of information effectively in a two hour dinner
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Yeah. So we knew that when we had 7-10 proposals it felt really good. And it felt digestible. SO that was the number we were shooting for. And then we just worked with the sort of the core organizers to whittle down what makes sense. Also to that end, we are really interested in contemplating and redefining and thinking about community for us and we've made an incredible effort to get a really diverse applicant pool because that means you have a really diverse pool of people saying "hey come to this event"
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
[Scott]: Hey Joseph! We just added you to the chat. We're talking with Jeff from FEAST right now. How are you?
[Joseph]: I'm good. You guys are in the middle of a conversation right now I guess?
[Scott]: Yeah, but welcome! Welcome in!
[Joseph]: I'll just mute myself! I'll just hit mute and listen for awhile us just a second.
[Scott]: Rock N roll. And totally feel free to join in anytime.
[Jeff]: YES! Other people talking!
[Lauren] Q: Hi, I'm Lauren. I guess I'm not super familiar with the planning process so far but taking advantage of your presence here, I'm curious to learn more about the details in your personal experiences about bringing large groups of people together and the actual planning and how you found the process of uniting desperate communities just represented here towards kind of a goal to serve many, many different communities as well. So maybe specific planning advice that you have through your experience?
[Jeff] A: Totally. That's a great question. And I think this is also not the end of my participation in this project either. To me I think that in the same way organizing people is a large part of what my practice is and so I'm really interested in that question. How do you bring a group of people together from around a city that don't know each other and define a value system and start making decisions and figure out how the leadership works within that? For instance, in Minneapolis it's a much smaller community so I think people at least had a sense of who was around the table. But I also think that at a certain point, because it's so task oriented, it's about practice not theory at the end of the day. It's a dinner. It's about making a dinner and having a party. And so, you can kind of get into the... I think the more task oriented the project the meetings start to be. I think there is a foundation of interest for people about what this project is and so I think that through saying "okay, these are the food people" then they get together and start cooking. During that cooking time, they start talking about what the community is.
[Theresa]: It's Theresa. I just wanted to extend on what Jeff is saying by way of I think that this is sort of unique in the sense that we're organizing the organizing group. We're not necessarily; it's not sprung out of a group of friends that started talking about something at a bar to make it happen. What we're sort of doing is almost like randomly sending out emails, sending out word and coming together to see who keeps coming back to talk about what it is that we're going to do. So really its a little bit f a different process in that way as far as the organizing goes. Would you say? And then I think that some of the things that we're interested in and thinking about is like "who is the community? What kind of audience do we want to draw? What sort of proposals are we hoping to direct or not direct?" So, that's a lot of questions. Maybe we should just start with one of those? You know, like what kind of projects are we looking to... Like for instance, Baltimore. They have a very sort of specific more like social services things like that. And so in Philadelphia, what kind of projects are we looking to fund? What do we see as needs of our community (coughs)? Excuse me.
[Jeff]: Yeah, and also if you told ten of your friends to come to this thing, not only what do you think would you like to fund but what would your friends like to fund too? That I think is the really interesting thing about when you start creating this community. If you have this sort of dispersed group of people organizing something, you have a pretty diverse pool of people that are coming and voting and then all of a sudden that group of people defines a value. And so I would like to hear ... What's really successful for us? I would like to pay for my studio time. We do not see a lot of success with that. It's a lot of like "I want to go and do this project in this community", "I want to be doing this sort of outreach". I want to hear what you have to say.
[Male Group Member]: I guess, to add to that. I think that there are so many artists in Philly that just need like $500-$1,000 to just get whatever they're doing off the ground. But I agree that it shouldn't be like paying for studio time or "I want to buy a new camcorder". I don't feel like that is a legitimate thing to fund. Even though it may help that person out in the future but there might be better ways for them to actually get that money. I think that being focused on projects that relate to whatever they're doing in the community or at least relate to Philadelphia, but not things like "I need this laptop and these speakers so I can do Skype chats every Tuesday." I love Plausible Artworld.
(Laughter)
I think that offering alternatives to the ones who do want to fund their studio time and like but a camcorder and say "well, there are these other resources out there that might be helpful" and at least have a list of links to say "there is Kick Starter, and there is the Awesome Foundation in Boston". Like there are a ton of groups out there that give micro grants to artists, just not like this dinner.
[Jeff]: Totally. Does anyone else? I like this action! YEAH!
[Chris]: I would like to know how you define community.
[Jeff]: Totally. That continues to be something that we talk about and think about. These two ideas of community and sustainability I think get thrown around constantly and their totally loaded words. I've been working in big institutions and small institutions and I think both of those ideas have a lot of mythology and falsehood around them that most of the time sustainable projects aren't sustainable. They're volunteer run. They have a huge start up cost, and a lot of expenses associated with them. I think a lot of times the sustainable projects, not sustainable art projects necessarily but sustainability ends up having a real boutique draw as opposed to something more pedestrian. And community projects rarely actually engage a "community" for people on Skype.
And I'm not reading that, I'm sorry. Scott? Are you on top of reading people's comments? If you want to read anything let me know because I'm not really able to read and pay attention like that
[Scott]: Maybe this is a good time to add in Steven's comment. He was just asking more about your earlier comments on a democratic process and he said that the way addressed what I was asking was more a comment on people's expectations and knowledge about preparing grant applications rather than how the project really makes democratic mean something. I guess that's not really a question. Maybe, I just wondered if you wanted to respond whether the project was trying to address ideas about democracy or whether it was just a way of kind of describing something briefly.
[Jeff]: I think democracy is really not in our name. We describe it as democratic but I think a better work is actually transparent. I think we're really a transparent granting organization where you see who is not winning, you hear conversations of people making decisions, you know how much people are being awarded and then you also see the return and people have to come back and show what they did with the money. The grantees have to show to the people that funded the project what they did. I don't know if that even answers your question Steven. Yeah? Thanks NATO! But that's sort of...here Kate. You are actually nicely articulating.
[Kate]: I was going to kind of fold this in with Alyssa's comment too because I think one of the great things is that, we've talked about this in the other meetings, but as an artist you apply for money and it's a totally opaque process and you don't know. You don't really get feedback most of the time. But this process, you're in there and you see the other proposals. So if your proposal sucks and you feel like you could articulate better you kind of say "oh, they won. This is why" and maybe like get feedback that way or you're having conversations with people that way. I mean, it is kind of an exercise in (inaudible 0:51:37.4). I don't know. I guess we don't talk about democracy that much but it is transparent and it is not a top down process really. It's everybody who is there, you vote for yourself. You're friends vote. The people who are organizing it vote. Like we're all there doing this project together, which is like democracy.
[Jeff]: I am also concerned about the organizational structure. Last night I did a talk about queer conscience and it reminded me a lot of where a lot of this project came out for me was in queer organizing. I worked with a group in Minneapolis, a help star group called Revolting Queers and just the systems and structures which really came out of labor organizing systems and feminist conversation circles and the way that was created. That really informs how we try to do FEAST and how I continue to try to talk about it. Which I think is important an important point to say that there is a reason that I'm so uncomfortable right now that I have a microphone. There is such a position of power that I hate and I really like that what we do may not be democratic, but there is enough activation of multiple voices. But I think that was nice to think back on. And also FEAST really came as a manifestation of an investigation for me that I was doing when the economy really started to shift thinking about queer economy and how we can queer economy. I'm really interested in how we can make small gestures to queer ourselves that's so outside of the way that we think about sexuality and gender that, you know. And I think that is totally in tune with queering the way that you think about your daily consumption and production. I don't know if I'm just rambling here...
[Kate]: (Laughing) yeah, I kind of got lost in what you were saying. Where my brain stopped last was, I guess I started thinking about how this isn't a perfect system and this isn't' a perfect event and it's still evolving and that's part of what is good about it and what is transparent about it. Is it everybody saying like this isn't the final solution to anything but we want an alternative and we're working on this together. Which is also...
[Steven]: Can I ask a question? Steven here.
[Kate]: Totes.
[Steven]: Is that okay if I just ask the question?
[Kate]: Please.
[Steven]: I didn't want to interrupt. One of the things that's really interesting is about how open ended it is in the terms of adapting to the community where it's going to be set up. You're obviously completely open to doing it differently in Philadelphia than it was done in Brooklyn and Minneapolis and Portland and so on. I have two questions really. One is I really wanted to know just how many places you have actually facilitated setting up this kind of a structure up and how different the types of means and responses were in each community? Like to what extent do you really get substantially different input and desires and proposals from one place to another? It would be kind of interesting for me to know that.
[Kate]: That's a great question. I think really that Jeff has been far more places than I have but I was involved in the beginning in Minneapolis because I used to live there and have been privy to the conversations there. I've been to the event in Brooklyn many times. But, they're actually very different events. I think Jeff said this earlier; Minneapolis is a much smaller community than Philly or New York. Everybody knows each other and the way that event happened was more like a group of people that already knew each other. And the event happens in a very different way. Part of this was the date was set very early so there weren't as many conversations as we are having here in Philly at all about the ideas. So it was like "okay the date is set, now we're producing the event". It's a very different feeling than coming in here and talking with all of you tonight even or even two weeks ago. Its like "what's going on in Philly?" That didn't' happen so much in Minneapolis. And so Minneapolis and it's partly because a lot of the people are high level art admin there, there's a lot of designers so it's a pretty slick event. They've got a really great website. They've got great design. They've got a lot of free production stuff that just makes it look really nice. They produce a really nice event. Brooklyn is much more low key and kind of rough around the edges maybe. I don't know if that's the right term or not. I think they are really different and really characterized by the city. I don't know if you want to add anything.
[Jeff]: Yeah. I went to LA in February and did a few conversations not nearly at this level of facilitation. But the biggest issue that they were talking about was a cross-city connection. They felt so disjointed from within the city of Los Angeles and that was something that they really wanted to tackle. I helped some folks in Jersey City do a project and that was SUPER localized. They really wanted to help fund artists that were working in a couple different studio buildings and so that's a totally different tactic. In Chicago, Incubate, I think they were really responding to a much more internal investigation. Again, let me preface this by saying that all these people have way more intelligent things to say about their institutions than my outside perspective. But, I think a lot of what they were responding to was that they wanted to consider different ways of organizing arts administration. And so it's a much more sort of... Abby talks about how they used to not want to do public programs at all and that they just wanted to do inside private events. I think it does wildly vary in what people are wanting to deal with. Part of what we do in Brooklyn is about creating an experience that is not complete without you. We let people come in early and help decorate. In New York everything is really polished. Everything is really clean and crisp. And you come and consume a cultural event. It's really rare that you can come and feel like you're an active participant in the organization of it, which I think is something that we're all responding too.
(Audio feed lost 1:00:15.9 - 1:01:24.9)
[Male group member]: Who goes to church?
(Massive laughter)
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
[Male group member]: Should I repeat my question? So, I had a question about ideal venues in Philly and this is for you to respond to if you're local and for people around the table. And then how FEAST Brooklyn chose their venue and kind of how it worked out and what is its location and all those things.
[Jeff]: Wow. That's a (inaudible 1:02:00.9) situation. And then there is also the question of do we pay them. We do pay them. It's very, very minimal. They're very generous with the space. We pay them several hundred dollars for electricity and time basically and wear and tear on the space. But I think that it also helps to have a place that maybe you are renting from. I've run into problems with donated space because you don't get any support. I love church basements because you get tables, chairs, and chip wear. You know, they're made to have church basement fundraisers. The Minneapolis FEAST just had an event at an Eagles. Like an American Legion sort of space, like a VFW and it was awesome. It was so, so, so, so fun and good. It was great because they had a bar and a full operating kitchen. To me, I think the most important thing is to have a serious kitchen. It is no fun to cook for 250 people in a ragtag operation and it makes a big difference to have something that is equipped to cook for that many people.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
We've done it all different ways. It's way better if you bring everything in and cook it there and serve it there and they have refrigeration there. It's way easier.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
For FEAST in Brooklyn we do it both on site and off site. And there is a kitchen in the church. This is also to say, that's if it's for 250 people. I mean, that's also a question. Are that many people what we want? Or what you guys want or whatever. What we all want. But I think, yeah here. Oh, can I just say one thing. I think that one thing that is important to me about a church or an Eagles or a space like that it doesn't feel like it's hip art kid zone. I think there is something really lovely about kids and old people and people that have lived in a neighborhood for a long time. That's really awesome. I think that if you move it into "fill in the blank industrial space" or "place that's really far and difficult to get to" that loses something for me. That might not be a problem from here though. So, I don't want to put that on you guys.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
No. no. no. no. no. no. no. Do you know what I mean? It's like when you're in some noise show then every tight panted, sorry if anyone is wearing tight pants...
[Elizabeth]: What's far? Philly is not that small and if we want to be inclusive I think that's kind of a loaded thing too. That's all relative and if you want to have everyone involved... It kind of takes me back to another thing. I attended two of the three earlier meetings and a came up, for instance, like the Kensington, is something that we kind of talked about at the second meeting too. The Kensington. There were some people that were like "well, this is the best place for it". I think that right of the bat it was sort of just have our own event. And I think that's something we should talk about. Do we want to have a Philly Feast or Neighborhood Feast? Personally, I feel like we should have one and sort of see how it goes. Let's not get ahead of ourselves in a way. But I also wonder what you think about the idea of having sort of a roving thing to begin with. Like doing it that it's really just getting the idea to catch on and having people and a lot of different communities so it's not appealing to just Center City. If we did one, I'd say Broad Street Ministry, who I've worked with in the past, is a big church on Broad Street. They donated the space, were very helpful, in my case anyway. You know, doing one in West Philly. Doing one in North. And just kind of... I just wondered what you all think about that. If there is a team of people that are working on the venue issue, that they sort of just start thinking of ideas and start working. You know, asking people all over. I have a connection here. You know. And just seeing. Maybe one catches on better as we sort of move along. But I just wondered about having sort of a roving thing to start with, at least to start with. I think it just encourages inclusivity.
[Female group member]: I was actually going to say a lot of the same things that Elizabeth did in the sense of what came out of the meetings thus far. I think it's really important. What the feel of the group is right? We want to include that. One of the main things that we got, other than a few people at this one meeting, was that there was an idea of being inclusive of everyone. So, not to say that having it in different neighborhoods on a schedule isn't an inclusive idea, but also the idea of having it in a central location where people can come from. I felt that those suggestions really strongly from the second two meetings. So just to give a little feedback from what has happened thus far. And also intention. What are our intentions as far as that goes? I think that's a really important question to ask. There are definitely some new faces here, so if there are new ideas about that we're really excited. I mean we're here just to get that feedback and that information so that it can shape our plans and organizing going forward. Broad Street Ministry actually has already offered to donate space and so that's really exciting. Now, that can't have alcohol so that's sort of too bad. But, anyway, we would obviously keep that in consideration. That's where we're at right now.
[Jeff]: Um, is NATO still on? Cause I'm going to tell a story
[Female group member]: I think he left.
[Jeff]: Aw man! Um, okay. So a couple responses. Minneapolis started doing a roving thing because they also wanted to sort of hit a bunch of different areas. I think it actually served them nicely because the first venue wasn't exactly right. And then they went to somewhere totally different and that was good for some things and not totally right. And now they're going to try another place. And so I think the nice thing about being roving is you can start to identify what your needs are and how many people come to where.
To the question about community, like how do we define community and how do we define location? Years ago, like 6 or 7 years ago, I was a lowly intern as Mass Mocha and NATO Thompson gave a lecture to us intern about the idea of becoming as a way to define community. And I'm going to butcher whatever he said because it happened so long ago and I wasn't really listening then but it stuck a little bit. Basically the idea is that there isn't some sort of static community that all of a sudden three different communities popped up. And now there's a new community here that's come together and will dissipate. And then we'll have another meeting in however long and that new group of people will become a new community. Not only is it these individuals that come together, but it's also this idea of value system and intention. And that's sort of to go back to the idea of are we interested in becoming non-profit. It's something that I loved about the Revolting Queers stuff was that there was no mission. There still is no mission. Whoever decided they wanted to make a flyer or poster or get on a microphone at a party, they were the ones who could start to define that evolving omission and that whoever sort of gathered and came together would define that intention. In the same way it can geographically roam, it can sort of cosmically or theoretically roam. Which I think is exciting and interesting too. Does anyone want to respond to any of those things I said?
[Male group member]: I want to respond to Elizabeth's comment and to yours about the roving place. I think it seems interesting that it's helpful in Minneapolis that they haven't really found what they're looking for yet. So they're kind of going to different venues. I also think it might be a little problematic to start out with the idea of roving and say "well, let's get one under our belt and if that venue isn't perfect then let's look at other venues." Because if the venue, like the Broad Street Church, is ideal then it might make sense to stay in a location because you don't really want to go to a lesser venue. It'd be like "oh man, I wish...we didn't have any spoons there. That sucks!"
(Laughter)
[Elizabeth]: What are we going to do to encourage proposals? How are we going to get the word out in neighborhoods I haven't even gone to frankly? You know, how are we going to get the word out? How are we going to market this thing too? I guess I was thinking with the roving thing is more appealing to people as a wider array of projects and community will be defined by the people that come to this thing. So, a more diverse sort of audience and proposals. Just to encourage that. Maybe geography doesn't matter. I just think it's really important that people are coming to these things that aren't just like, someone like me. I want to see other people that have other ideas than I do and that live in different communities where they want to propose a project that will help their community.
[Jeff]: I think there is a lot of possibility with as low of a price point, assuming that here a $10-$20 range you really get a diverse, that ends up being a non-issue a lot of the time. It's too big of an opportunity not to waste.
[Male group member]: Maybe price point is something else we should talk about because I think that $20 for a family is a lot of money. If you're bringing wife and kids that becomes an $80 meal. I think to some people, it's beyond their threshold of what they can afford.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Do you do like pay as you wish?
[Jeff]: We have a kind and friendly yet forceful team of front desk people who ask $10-$20 at the door but no one gets turned away because they don't have enough money. That's in all of our materials too.
[Chris]: I think what you are saying about the movable community kind of answers my question. Like, what happens if there's problem with politics in there?
[Jeff]: If there's a problem in the community with politics? In organizing or...?
[Chris]: In organizing and such. Yeah. Because I've been in communities where it's like there were little cliques and politics just tore the thing apart.
[Scott]: Do you mean like inter-group strife and that sort of thing?
[Chris]: Yeah.
[Scott]: Okay.
[Jeff]: I think that also part of the architecture of what we're setting up now too. Just to think back to Revolting Queer stuff, now there are like the Pegasus Party and the Beast You Jump Party and several different little action groups that have splintered off and then there's still sort of this core group of organizers. I think what's exciting is that there can be pods of people that break off and say "oh, well I want to do it this way." I don't really fear that but I also think that letting people throw their two cents and figure out how this should be organized is an exciting and hopefully, lest I say it Steven, democratic-ish way of deciding how this event could happen. AND, I also really want to reiterate it doesn't have to be called FEAST, it doesn't have to raise money, and it doesn't have to do... It doesn't have to have voting, it doesn't have t be for art. You know, it doesn't even have to happen! I think it's interesting to consider what systems are needed here. Maybe there's a public granting organization in Philly that I don't know about that answers a lot of these questions already.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
What about bums? They only want free food! Hey! They are a big part of the Green Pointe Community. We are across the street from a park where people hang out all day. No, it's not like a lot. It's definitely... People come in. That's fine. I'm sure that people that I wouldn't consider bums a lot of others would. And I'm sure I'm sure some people consider me a bum. AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Timothy just joined the chat!!!! Um, does anyone else want to say something? Um, yes.
[Female group member]: I don't know if this is really a solution, just a thought. You could have a central dinner and then rotate around every other time. Obviously that will come organically, but as far as... I think the idea of the art projects being funded is great. But also in certain communities, like public amenities like parks or public spaces are in a lot of need for help like my neighborhood and a lot of people's neighborhoods. So, I think that would be a really interesting way to combine an art piece and a public space piece. (Inaudible 1:18:58.4) arts does a lot of work but they're actually really low on funding now and I'm not saying we should fund them, but maybe there is some kind of intersection there that could be explored.
[Jeff]: Yeah. Something that we, in Brooklyn, have always talked about but never really done is thinking about what if we gave a specific sort of charge or question or theme or neighborhood to respond to. And that might be another sort of direction to go in as well. And that also might reach out into a different demographic or population that maybe is difficult to connect with that this group really wants to end up serving. I sort of feel like maybe it might be, I know that it's helpful for this to be in a big group, but I kind of would like to see what would shake down if we said like "are there specific people that are really interested in the food thing?", "are there specific people that are really interested in the figuring out venues and outreach?" I'm just kind of going off of the Minneapolis has broken up and how we've broken up. You know, people who are really sort of wanting to do like decorating, finding bands, doing sort of event stuff. Do people feel like they want to specialize? Let me say this actually, because I think this is a worthwhile question. I don't want to assume. Are people that are here tonight interesting in being sort of organizers of this event? It's fine if you aren't. Are people here wanting to spend one day a month, two days a month considering working on this investigation?
[Scott]: Is it worth asking why people want to do that? The only reason I ask is because my understanding from some of the last meetings is there was something like upwards of sixty people who wanted to help organize or something like this. Am I getting that right? Which is totally ridiculous. It's not ridiculous for some things. For a large scale organization that might have thousands of members, it's not. But for an event where, pretty much, there may be only a few times with that many people in Philadelphia, if that. I think that what attracts people to organizing something is different for different people and sometimes that doesn't work out very well. Sometimes it really could. And people have vested interest for different reasons. For instance, if an event is going to happen in my neighborhood then "oh yeah, I'm totally interested in doing it" but it's not "ooooooooooh. I don't know." So maybe it matters why people want to do it is all I'm saying. It could impact how it all could shape up. I guess I was just curious. If people here are interested, I'd be curious as to why. Not to judge what anybody's reasons are, because everything is legitimate and fine but, yeah.
[Rachel]: One of the reasons that I'm attracted to it is because food brings people together. So, it's either the food or the art that you're coming for. And so either way you're going to be exposed to something new. I would love to be working with food. I love food. I cook all the time. I have a garden. You can just learn a lot by talking to the people next to you and could be like part of the theme too. I'm not sure, I don't know. It depends if we have theme nights, but the food can be part of it. I had something else but it escaped my mind.
[Male group member]: Scott, I think I disagree with your comment. I think like if we started a Google group and we had 60 people on there. We have a Google group, okay, and it has 16 but it's going to be up to 60 eventually. But I think that if kind of break those into committees of let's say venue and food and marketing or whatever, I think that organizing an event for 200 people is a really big task. I think it's better to have like 60 people who maybe half are really interested in doing something than have 5 who are pulling their hair out. So I think it's better to start with that kind of energy amongst us than to start with less and try to talk people into it. Who knows. I think there's natural leaders that kind of come out and will say "I'm going to plan the menu" or "these two people are going to plan the menu" and then everyone else helps cook and then someone else does all the legwork to chose the venue. It's like that's going to organically occur. But I think it's better to start with more than less. Because if you have like five people in a room who want to do this, it seems like it would be crazy.
[Female group member]: I think that the thing about it too is that it's a valid question in a way but I also totally understand your point. But I think that the interesting thing about the organizing process has been what I think is going to happen and what seems to be happening is like the people that keep emailing me back and the people that keep coming back are not interested in it just because they want to propose an art project. Which is kind of the sense of some of the people that I got from some of the other meetings. Yeah, we had like 60 some people, maybe more, but they'll sort of fall away and perhaps they'll come back and propose a project which is totally great too. But the good news is that it naturally sort of works its way out as we go.
[Jeff]: Yeah, I think that's outside of FEAST stuff. What I've learned is that you get a Google group of 60 people and in two weeks you either get where no one replies back and the group dies or you get 15 people left standing that aren't sick of getting emails all the time and your really start to generate a dialog. I'm willing to trust in that system as opposed to sort of allocating who is officially in charge of something or not. I mean I'm sure we could have gone about this saying four or five people in Philly who would be really good at this and we could have come up with a group that would have executed it in a really specific way and knowing what to do. Or work with a specific organization but I think this way, this sort of mass call out is a more interesting way to see who is out there. There were people at that meeting in South Philly that were like "oh, we don't really want to organize so we're just going to do this at our house" and have like a few people over. And that's great. That's shifting culture in a community or city as well which is really exciting.
[Female group member]: You started talking about food. What's your name again? Rachael. Rachael started talking about food and I think that's a really important place to be because it is sort of my weak spot in this whole thing. I think that's such a huge part of this and it can take so many different forms. So maybe if there are other people that have this sort of interest in food, we could talk a little bit more about that. Are there other people that are interested in cooking or have sort of ideas about local organic food or... Kate's pointing to her brother. Thank you.
[Elliot]: My name is Elliot and I was just mentioned as Kate's younger brother. I live in West Philadelphia. My primary interest in this, but not only interest, is in the food aspect of it. I'm a very avid cook. I went to Oberlin College which has a very strong co-op community where I spent a semester and a half cooking for about 60-80 people once a week leading the kitchen. So I have a bit of experience in that regard and what it takes to plan a menu and organize for a whole group of people like that. Just the idea of this community run project where it's got his clear focus where it's about community and it's about art and bringing food into the mix and having the same sort of community focus on the food as well is something that is really a great interest of mine. I think that in the end, I'd really want to be focused on, and I'm sure that many other people would agree, locally produced organic. I mean really knowing where the food you're eating is coming from and having sort of a clear explanation of why you're serving this and where it's all from so that people really understand where it's coming from the same way that people are coming in and explaining their art ideas and where that's coming from and what it's all about. I know I'm definitely on board in doing what I can for the cooking aspect. My girlfriend is a professional cook as well and she' completely on board. She's actually just quitting her job in a month and wants to get more involved in this. Not the only reason, but it's on the list. But that's my schpeal and I'm excited about it.
[Female group member]: For the food, I think if we had sort of like a next step in the food part of it. Like if we just had another meeting, like the food people or something and then there's not anyone... You know there are a few aspects that go into the food. Sourcing it. We talked about this at the South Philly one. Just about how you don't want to exhaust your sources too much and that all is going to depend on how often we're going to have the events. Like I have relationships with some farmers that I can definitely tap into if somebody else wants to take, like Angela and I were talking about, the booze. She already has some relationships in place. I think because there is the menu planning, but if we are going to do a local organic, which absolutely yes, the menu is going to be based on what is available. Seasonality and who is going to donate food. So there are two components going on there. So I think if we had a meeting and then we sort of could say who has connections already, what's the strong point, who wants to actually do prep work. I just think that's a solid next step. And that's just the food component. Just in terms of moving forward and what we're going to do. I think we should plan for that.
[Jeff]: Totally. And from what I've seen with other places is the food is. You can find a spot. You can find a place that can house people. At the end of the day, it's good to be thoughtful about it, but finding someone that's like "yeah, I'll cook for free for 200 people" um, that's a daunting task. So I think that getting that settled is really important. And then from that, that builds a lot of energy because that's also not only is that a big logistical issue it's also creating space for people. Go and have dinner, make dinner together and talk about what kind of meal you want to make. We talk about the menu. You start to build that sub-community of people which is where a lot of conversations happen.
[Scott]: Hey Joan, did you want to chime in? You typed in something but I can just read it if you want. Or feel free to talk. Oh, okay. Cool. So I don't know if you guys can get that but Joan used to run an organic cafe here in Old City, it's still in Philly. And Jonathan would love to be involved but he's a little far away. We can still talk with him about a Cape Town version maybe if people are interested. I just wanted to say that we had already offered use of this space if you guys wanted to try it for one of the roving things, except for the fact that we don't have a full service kitchen with like lots of big ovens and crazy (expletive 1:33:09.0) like that. We do have a kitchen with a couple of ovens and like a total ragtag operation however. So just bear that in mind. But, that's one of the few things we could do.
[Jeff]: Do we maybe want to do...it's like 7:36 and I know that officially we wrap up at 8:00. You can probably tend to go a little later it seems like, if the YouTube karaoke gets raging which, I am in the house so I think it probably will...
I actually think it's important to meet in person before doing the Google thing or the email thing. So maybe if we could just do a little break off of food, admin so like venue systems, emails and all that stuff, and artists. How to do outreach and that sort of thing. Does that sound like three distinct categories that people would be interested in participating in? Food, admin and artists. So like organizing stuff vs..... And artists would also be like decorating stuff, bands and more of the like aesthetic piece of it. Does that sound okay? Like an okay break up? Or should we just do food and... Does anyone want to weigh in? Please?
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Just connecting people, setting up the systems. I mean, I can do a lot of the setting up of the systems too but... Um, food. That's like a whole committee. Design. I think that would probably be an admin group here. Web and print, because we have a lot of stuff that we need to make. And then working with our venue. That's all stuff that's in the admin world. Then the people that are like going out and trying to get people to propose projects and working with them to work on presentation, that stuff. Yeah, and then day of. Yeah. And those are sort of some different ways to think about it. Do we want to break up like that? Do we want to have a big group conversation still? I don't know. I don't want to propose that.
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
Well, maybe let's do at least this. Let's have food people meet at this end of the table and talk for 15-20 minutes. And the more admin type since that gets a little blurrier what roles those are. No, I think it's good to like stop and talk and like figure out what people are interested in and who is interested in what. Are people okay with that?
(Inaudible comment or question from background)
(Dog barking)
[Scott]: Ultimately, we wanted you guys to be here too in part to like look at different models and structures for artworlds and communities because this is an example of one of those. I'm really curious about... Oh, that's Joan's dog (laughing).
(Laughter)
I thought I heard a dog out there somewhere. No worries, it's cool. I thought it was outside. Yeah, anyway. Just wondering if anybody out there has anything else they wanted to talk about in the context of, I don't know, seeing this as either a reproducible model for other kinds of creative infrastructure projects or has any interest in that. We haven't had any real questions there for awhile so maybe we should just assume that people are just interested and happy as clams.I personally thought it was great to have part of this be an organizing session too. So, I wasn't really imagining splitting up into teams or whatever. But yeah, if that's the way that works best for you then maybe we should try it to see where it goes.
I just wanted to mention one other thing. We had like set up a kind of a conversation piece. Jeff had set up a conversation piece and said that at some point it would be nice to look at and talk about. All these kind of drawings and notes that come from traveling and visiting various cities and talking about this kind of thing. So it would be good to visit that at some point for anyone who wants to stay a little bit longer.
[Jeff]: I'm thinking kind of about making things these days. I've never made things. I'm not a "maker". So I'm dipping my toe into the world of making objects. This is hardly an object but I'm working... Just to give you a little wider scope of what I'm working on right now, I am in residency at a place called Transformer Gallery, not Transformer gallery, Transformer in Washington D.C. which is a wonderful non-profit space where they are letting me sort of take over and use it as a big note taking space and use it as a place to host events and try out projects and it's book ending a big initiative that I've been working on collaboratively with several artists called Empire Builder which is a cross country train trip leaving from Washington D.C. to Portland, OR next weekend. And we're going to do gorilla public programs along the train. When we arrive in Portland we're there to participate in a conference called Open Engagement which is about social practice and the theme is making things. Making things better, making things worse. And I feel like I do a lot of making things better and I feel like I do a lot of making things worse. So I wanted to try making things so I could be the holy trinity at Open Engagement. I'm doing a project there called 100 Dance Moves for Portland which is an exploration for me and a couple collaborators on how people's movements in a city can be charted and recreated and maybe even start a dance party. I can tell you more if you go stand over there. Or maybe not. Maybe I won't tell you anymore. We can at least touch things that I've made. Kind of. Alright. Thank you internet. You know who that is. Bye
Cool Joan. Just to clarify, you're specifically interested in food or all of it?
[Joan]: Okay. Food or artists. Whatever. Either or. I'm open for wherever I might be needed.
[Jeff]: You want the whole thing? Awesome. Cool, thank you.
Thank you BaseKamp. That's me thanking BaseKamp for the internet.
[Scott]: So see you all later and we'll follow up on the discussion list and let everybody know how the work groups go.
(Group splits up into groups 1:44:07.0 - 3:06:45.5)
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